BRITAIN TODAY
Hodson, James Lanadale
BRITAIN TODAY By James Lanadale Hodson Well-Known British novelist and war correspondent Author of Grey Down-Red Night, Harvest in the North, etc. A Portrait of a City and Its People Under...
...8. The Netherlands East Indies...
...A new sort ef rubbing aboulders goes on...
...were ruffians in the Rhondda because of the strikes we've had in the past, but they're realizing we're quite decent people...
...A lot of folk are spending a hard-earned holiday doing this job, and have journeyed from the safe provinces to stormy London to do it...
...Reconstruction Not Enough for Dutch Underground ThK underground forcea of Holland are planning fol the time when the Germans will be ousted...
...There are going to be , two places that are like home to them, and indeed, very often two real homes for them over many, many years...
...The men and Women I saw looking after the exodus at the railway' stations were those one always sees on these jobs—Red Cross nurses, clergymen, members of the Women's Voluntary Services, the school teachers •"d air raid wardens...
...liaten to the roar of our aircraft A war narrows some gulfs and widens others...
...Is necesaary...
...When childless couples take a boy or girl into their house, and the child brings something they've been aching for, and they and the child grow to love ona another—and it's ten to one they do—there's a note of something like tragedy in the parting when it has to come...
...All these children call the Welsh people they're billeted on 'Aunt' and 'Uncle...
...9. Liberated Holland ia urged to coper ate with other westers European powers and to aaaiat "convincingly aad loyally" in establishing a "new community of nations restricting sovereignty, as all elates mast in the post wsr world, la order to create an international order baaed on law and upheld by international force...
...t They were all (lad to be going, I think...
...patient, sitting on their packages, each child wearing s lsrge addreaa label, a label on this precious morsel of humanity consigning him be didn't know where...
...Of course, there'll be some heartbreak in it, too...
...One keeps running into the unsung heroes...
...pleased the children sre off to ssfety, sorrowful st the desolation and1 loneliness of empty homes...
...Whr doesn't subdue but rather enhances man's stUpnge htntvlor...
...A Portrait of a City and Its People Under Robot-Bombing Terror jl'ONDON baa taut aaaay thousands ot its children V bey««d range of the flying bombs, and I've W-J watched them leave Padding ton railway elation...
...And what they demand for the future is not jutt a reproducl ioa of what they had before 1940...
...He pulled out a photograph of a group of boys...
...we af the bates bringing the little one to Paddington Ipa get in the way af a flying bomb and windows had pan smeshed, hot the netting covering the glass had saved the passengers...
...A "radical rejuvena tion" of the nation's life In a political, social, economic and cultural sense...
...6 The desirability of equalizing the stotas of agricultural and induatrial workera ia expreaaed., 7. The State ia "required" to participate more actively in the development ef the nation's spiritual and artistic talents, ita arte and aclencee and the "eeascieuaneas of ita cultaral inheritance...
...I spoke to a woman who was on the verge of tears when talking of what she knew must soon happen...
...A play producer I know well wrote to a newspaper this week saying be didn't deapair of the theatre's future, because men who>• in the Services—and he's a Lt.« Commander himaelf—will come back with new ideas, new energy, and, he hopes, sweep away those who're •till trying to live in 1938 Yes, we'wa got some who're still trying to live a prewar life...
...Aad aa ivtashe...
...Glad to be gaiag...
...And I, as a north countryman, am quite pleased at the thought of London children going up to my native heath and learning to appreciate Lancashire's broad Vowels and broad humor or to sing in a full-throated Yorkshire fashion, to tramp the Yorkshire dales or to see the lovely English Ijikes...
...We discuss sometimes whst lasting effect those shifts af people will have...
...Their aent and daughters with the thoughtlessness of youth ate the callous ones...
...I remember a reporter in the Bhondda Valley, South Wales, saying to me at the time that they had 10,000 people, mostly children, from the Midlands industrial areas: "The question is—will the children be Welshified or shall we be Anglicized...
...They'll see s "Black Country," too, and coal mines and factories and workshops they've only read about in books...
...no more...
...In 1940, a good many children under five Went from the cities to country folk and, children's memories being short, some of them hardly knew their true parents when, many months later, the time came _ to go home...
...What can one aay T I. walked up the bit) going hsme It waa a toreiy evening far the moment, calm and ureal...
...They'll learn how diverse is this England...
...You can imagine how bitter the real Mother could be, and how sad the foster-mother, and how deeply upset the child...
...Over there aa hers*-war has one alight aflver Hahtg...
...Any description that attempts to be honest must fote the evacuated mothers—though happily the number is not large—who develop high and mighty ideas...
...On my ahip to Prance recently was a middle-aged man in the Obaerver Corps who had given up his job as accountant to spend two months on ships in the English Chsnnel watching...
...Aye, and for soma of those who lie awake in the night and, if they're near the coaat, liaten for the rumble of cross-Channel guns, or if they're further off...
...Get a dry bed here...
...Britain will be a more united country after the war...
...Surinam, aad Curacao are "entitled" to fulfillment of Queen "voire in the government," necessitating a repreaing the equality of the parta of the Netherlands Kingdom...
...His ambulance drivers yesterday voluntarily gave up one of the days off each fortnight until the blitz grows less stiff...
...Last night I talked with my local chief at the ambulance, a sergent of artillery on the Western Front in the last wsr...
...Bat glad to go...
...1 came ashore and met an Admiral'a daughter of 35 who leaves home at 8 s. m. snd gets back at 7 p. m. after working on aircraft fabric ail day for *3 13 od a week...
...homes which sent sons and daughters to strangera are now taking strangers in...
...2. It ia proclaimed that a parliamentary, democratic atate la a condition for healthy, political development guaranteeing minority righta, freedom of religion and conscience, and democratic liberties ef prese and aasociatien...
...He grinned: "Was worse at Pasachaendaele in '17," he said...
...This is the second great evacuation London has had, but this is a smaller one than 1940's and will- we hope and believe—be much briefer...
...3. It ia aaid that the times demand an cxtenalon to the social Held of the democratic principle* ef a "voire in the government," neeeaeltating a depreaentatlon of workera and conaumera In industrial management...
...Indeed, it has been already...
...The beauty af England waa sharp »I moat as a sword thrust...
...Both conservative and leftist underground groups hsve joined in drawing u| a manifesto dealing with postwar problems, and it ii given to the world by the conservative Vrij Nederlani and socialist Het Parool...
...He said: "They're sll deed except me, one who'd won the Military Medal was killed at Dunkirk, one an ace pilot in the Battle of Britain, one killed over Malta, that one killed in the Western Desert and two killed in the blitz on l-ondon...
...I've known of instances where it is the evacuated woman and her visiting husbsnd who've monopolized *h» house and almost driven the real householders out...
...I believe we shall go a little further to the Left, but quits steadily...
...1 don't think they need lie...
...But most ef them were quiet and some very solemn...
...He put the picture .away again...
...though...
...nt From there on the men and women who havi fought Hitler's men for four years sum up their ideal of the future under nine heads: 1. The reconstruction of Holland as it existed before Msy 10, 1940, even with the correction of serious fsults, Is not sufficient...
...I saw it when I was in the United States recently...
...And, man, it's doing our reputation good...
...People thought we...
...When the trains want eat, some youngsters cheered...
...Some folk abroad grow alarmed occasionally at the notion that Britain will go "Red...
...It is a sidelight on war...
...And it will be the same here...
...We're not going violently or swiftly in any direction, if I am any judge...
...I didn't aay any...
...4. The opinion ia expreaaed that laiasei-faire cspitalist production methods do not guarantee pro pie social security and ehould therefore be replaced by "a system of managemeat abolishing production for profit • 5. Human equality and the 'Irreplaceable slgniffeanee of personality" are acknowledged, and all diacrimination en the ground of religion, race or class ia rejected while social rights—such aa State asaiatancc in illneaa and aid age, equal educational chances and equal health treatment for the citizen in return for giving his energies to the community — sre demanded...
...The first part of the stste ment deals with the restitution of democratic govern in...
...He's had twelve holidays in nearly five years of war...
...One little girl from Birmingham already sings hymns in Welsh with quite a good accent...
...And which of us is not th ericher for that...
...Heeuea's account af the migration ef children from the sooth ef Bagiaad to the West and North remains tignllcant...
...We've got soldiers and sailors who wsnt a different Britain from the one they knew to corns back to, and we've got a lot of others who'll be content to come back to what they had, since so many can't be sure of coming back at all...
...He said: "We get a bit o' fun sometimes-— why, bless you, 1 used to have two Russian ballet dancers among my ambulance attendants...
...But quite unexpectedly sometimes one runs into the tragedy of war as though somebody had hit you in the fare...
...only one girl wounded...
...I aaid that was hard going...
...But taken in the round, these shifts of persons are forcing town and country to learn about one another—which is good...
...came back ta ate from 1*17 whan I was waiting to go to Prance, aa evening whan I watched the satoke curling ap from eat tags chimneys, and the pigeons flying ever the wood aad heard the curlew crying—aad wondered haw many . more sunsets I was going to tea...
...Twelve days...
...The robot-bombing af Leaden has net to- aa end, for we here new burned oat meet at the home to* nests from which the bass bsmbe were launched But Mr...
...Polka from different regieaa are gettiag acquainted They ate learning one anethera dialects, viewpoints, customs...
...A Government accountant sat next to me in the Tube...
...A middle-aged teacher with a group bound for Wales said to me: "I waa bombed myaelf yesterday- only the house walls left, but apart from this"—pointing fc» piaster near her eye—"I'm all right...
...the skies for "Jerry" aircraft...
...This curious difference, tee, that today children are going north to cities which themselves in 1940 were sending their children to the country regions...
...It's the parents who sre most sad...
...And It must be the same new for ear lads waiting to cross the Channel...
...We're a steady lot, easy-going, often illogical, but with both our feet firmly on the ground...
...thing...
Vol. 27 • September 1944 • No. 38
